Congressional Committees Make Some Gun-Rights Provisions Permanent

WASHINGTON — With gun safety measures headed to the Senate floor, members of the House and Senate appropriations committees have quietly made permanent four formerly temporary gun-rights provisions largely favored by Republicans. Those provisions are part of a spending bill that would keep the government running through Sept. 30.

The provisions, which have been renewed separately at various points, would prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventories to ensure that they have not lost guns or had them stolen, and would retain a broad definition of “antique” guns that can be imported into the United States outside of normal regulations.

Another amendment would prevent the A.T.F. from refusing to renew a dealer’s license for lack of business; many licensed dealers who are not actively engaged in selling firearms can now obtain a license to sell guns and often fly under the radar of the agency and other law enforcement officials, which gun control advocates argue leads to a freer flow of illegal guns.

A final measure would require the bureau to attach a disclaimer to data about guns to indicate that it “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crimes.”

Officials from the A.T.F. have long complained that quirky laws passed by Congress hamstring their ability to curb gun crimes. For example, under federal laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions, making it hard to track illegal guns.

Many of the provisions have been regularly added to appropriations bills since 2004. But Senate Democrats on the committee — pushed by Republicans and some Democrats who have made gun rights a signature issue — reluctantly agreed to make them permanent to stave off what they saw as an even more far-reaching House version of the bill.

The House offering contained a new rider that would prevent the A.T.F. from requiring gun dealers on the Southwest border to notify the agency when selling two or more long guns — semiautomatic rifles, higher than .22 caliber with detachable magazines — to the same buyer within five days. These firearms are the preferred weapons of Mexican drug cartels, Senate aides said.

“The Second Amendment is a fundamental right guaranteed by our Constitution,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, in a statement about the provisions. “And we should protect it wherever we can.”

As part of his agenda to regulate some firearms, President Obama recently signed an executive order lifting the ban on gun research. Other restrictions sought by the White House after the Newtown, Conn., shooting in December must go through Congress.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider the renewal of an assault weapons ban and restrictions on magazine sizes. This week, the panel passed a measure that would expand the use of background checks to private gun sales, and another to renew a grant program to help schools improve security. The committee also approved a measure last week that would make the already illegal practice of buying a gun for someone else who is legally barred from having one — known as a straw purchase — a felony and to increase penalties for the crime.

The debate in the Judiciary Committee will end Thursday, moving consideration of gun legislation to the Senate floor and perhaps the House, where members have indicated they might consider any legislation that the Senate passes.

But any legislation that comes to the Senate floor could be undermined by riders on appropriations bills like the one being debated on the floor now, which would keep the government running through the end of September. The Senate is trying to pass a short-term measure to prevent the government from shutting down, as members from both parties and chambers go about the business of creating actual budgets. For the last two years, Republicans and Democrats have fought over these short-term spending agreements, over the amount in them and the policy riders that Republicans often attach to them as part of the deal.

These riders are a boon to Senate Republicans, particularly those who are strong advocates of Second Amendment rights, and a bit of an embarrassment to some Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are trying to avoid policy riders and also not handcuff their colleagues who are active in creating new gun legislation.

Even though the gun-rights provisions are long standing, making them permanent is “counterproductive,” said Garen J. Wintemute, the director of the violence prevention research program at the University of California, Davis. “Regular inventories help identify retailers who are not adequately protecting their firearms from loss or theft and, more important, those who are letting firearms go out the back door and declaring them lost or stolen,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Congressional Committees Make Some Gun-Rights Provisions Permanent. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe